Gas powered turbines generally include a compressor section that draws in and compresses air, a combustor section where the compressed air is mixed with a fuel and ignited, and a turbine section across which the resultant combustion products are expanded. The expansion of the combustion products drives the turbine to rotate, which in turn drives the compressor.
Within each of the compressor section and turbine section are multiple flowpath spanning rotor blades. Such blades typically include one or more airfoil shaped profiles, and are designed to interact with the flow of fluid through the primary fluid flowpath of the gas turbine engine either by being turned by the fluid flow, in the case of turbine blades, or by driving the fluid flow, in the case of compressor blades.
One impact of using airfoil shaped blades is that each blade has vibratory modes that can cause flutter and flow shedding, which can negatively impact the performance of the blade due to the resultant non-integral vibrations.